We’ve Moved!

In Bremerton, a license to cat?

I must admit, I was feeling some guilt at
Wednesday night’s City Council meeting. On the agenda was
a new contract for service with the Kitsap Humane Society, part of
which included a new “lifetime” license for cats and dogs. Owners
of such pets are required to have them licensed each year.

And then it hit me. I had become a scofflaw.

My wife and I adopted Grover, our precious 007-like
tuxedo cat, from the humane society in 2009. The organization was a
different place then; our cat was sleeping in a litter box when we
came upon him. Euthanasia rates, now at 2.5 percent, were closer to
50 percent back in those days. But I recall walking out the door
with our new kitty, having licensed him for a nominal fee.

Kitsap Humane Society Executive Director Eric Stevens
explained to the Council Wednesday that a new “lifetime” fee
— $25 for cats and $45 for dogs — would make it easier for pet
owners by eliminating a $12.50 annual fee for dogs and $7.50 for
cats.

I hadn’t paid for our license since that fateful day
we adopted our kitty. I didn’t know it but I was skirting the
law!

Upon hearing the news, Grover — who we named for
America’s 22nd and 24th president — just gave me a blank
stare. I tried to convince him this was a big deal, but he wasn’t
interested in much else other than a tummy rub.

My cat’s lackadaisical attitude made me wonder: what
good is a pet license for him, anyway? And how many other pet
owners out there had also failed to keep up their licenses?

Hiding in plain
sight.

First, take the number of cats and dogs that reside
in Bremerton. While impossible to quantify exactly, Stevens said
most communities average two pets per household. Thus, with 26,000
households, that puts our pet population somewhere around
52,000.

Stevens said that 820 licenses were issued for
Bremerton pets in 2015, an increase of 63 percent. That’s still a
far cry from covering all pets in the city, he acknowledged, but he
anticipates the number rising higher with the new “lifetime”
option. Plus, more people are choosing to adopt from shelters, and
animals that leave there must be licensed, he added.

But what’s the point? Stevens said licensing makes it
easier to return pets to their rightful owners if they get lost. He
called it a kind of “insurance policy.”

The Council approved Wednesday a new contract with
the humane society to handle animal control services. The contract,
which goes through 2020, increases two percent each year, from
$202,000 to almost $219,000 annually.

Licensing revenues go to the humane society, not the
city. You can
register your pet online here. I know I plan to get Grover
properly licensed — and back within the confines of the law —
myself.

10% compliance rate?! Why even have the law? Tax the pet food or something… If the money is going to the Humane Society anyway, why don’t they just negotiate more from the city and safe everybody the trouble of filing online, updating and securing databases, and the like. Most people in this day and age pay to have their pets micro chipped, which is a modern and more effective way of getting a lost animal returned. It seems like the “lifetime” license is good way for the Humane Society to get years worth of license money out of a pet own at the point of adoption before they have time to go home and become delinquent for failing to paying a fee for something for which 90% of people in Bremerton clearly see no benefit from doing.

Catlady,
My point was that the license fees were obviously created to pass pet related costs incurred by the city on to the pet owners. The pet owners are clearly shirking this responsibility by going delinquent on their licenses. In order for the Humane Society to get the funding they need to perform the important job they do, they need a constant and secure source of funding. Rather that 10% of pet owners covering the other 90%, it seems we need to find a way for all pet owners to help pay the bills, in a way they cannot avoid.